Stretching

Something I don’t do enough! I hardly do it after my runs (yeah, bring your jaw up back to its original position!) unless I head to Richard’s class after my Saturday runs. My cool down after runs involve a 5 minute walk back to the car and that’s about all there is. Of course Michael makes me stretch after each set – in fact, it’s obligatory! And he wouldn’t let us continue until I do. Yes, I do know the benefits of stretching and I know I should do it and have no excuse to skip it…don’t ask, I don’t know why I don’t do it either.

Richard most likely knew I hardly do it or he thought I could do with mega doses of it because I definitely had the most incredible session on Monday morning. There were lots of asanas for the hips and hamstrings and it helped loosen up and lengthened those muscles, Flexible and loose muscles which in turned translated into a great tempo run yesterday morning. Here were some of the asanas we did after the classical sun salutations (I attended the Hatha Yoga 1 class instead of my de-rigueur Vinyasa Yoga 2 or Hatha Yoga 2):

a) Standing forward bend

b) Chair pose (think burning quads)

c) Warrior 1

d) Side angle forward bend

e) Revolving triangle

f) Revolving side angle pose

g) Wide legged standing forward bend

h) Seated forward bend

i) Single leg/Hero chin-to-shin forward bend

j) Single leg/Hero lifted head-to-knee pose (darn I forgot what’s this one called)

k) Pigeon pose

l) Bridge and Wheel

m) Spinal twist before Savasana

p/s: the sequence may be a bit jumbled up since I’m putting up what comes to mind as I write this

Typically my day starts with some cat rolls/stretches to warm up the back and spine followed with a downward dog to loosen up the hamstrings and calf muscles. Then comes 2-3 rounds of Sun Salutations A and B or the classical Sun Salutations. I wish there was more time to incorporate a full session before heading into the gym or running but as it is, I’m up at 4-5 am for Buteyko.

Speaking of my supposedly-refreshed-legs…I didn’t do that well with this morning’s legs session. I should have been able to squat, push whatever heavier weights but somehow that didn’t happen. Doubt it was rest/sleep or nutrition; guess it was one of those days. Then again, those days outnumber any good ones by 99 to 1! Maybe I’m the complaining and plenty-of-excuses girl.

Supersets of:

a) Smith machine squats

b) Cybex plate loaded squat press

c) Cybex seated calf raises

Supersets of:

d) DB walking lunges

e) Jumping squats (uurgh!)

Supersets of:

f) Technogym leg extension (Michael’s favourite)

g) Nautilus hip adductor (my jaw fell when Michael said we weren’t doing the abductor!)

Single sets of:

h) Precor bicep curl

i) Precor Abcrunch